U.S. Open

Baseball and Golf

~ Lee Swanson ~ 8 Comments

I don’t like baseball. Never have. Never played the game, not so much as a single pitch. My parents enrolled us in little league—peewees, it was called—when I was, well, little. Went there with my brother and I just ran laps around the field. Didn’t go back the second day.

I like golf. I’ve been hooked on it ever since I first picked up a club, which is not to say I’m good at it, because I’m not. But I practice a fair amount and play whenever I can. People who don’t play golf don’t understand. “How hard can it be? The ball isn’t moving,” they will say. But here’s the thing—it may be the hardest game there is. It certainly is for me. Every golf course is different, every shot is different. You have to deal with distance and direction in the split second the club is in contact with the ball. And not only the physical but the mental aspects of it; overcoming uncertainty to be able to do as well as you can.

I can’t tell you the name of a single baseball player on any team today. Not a one. I’ve been to three major league games in my life. Three too many. Once when I was a Cub Scout, and twice because friends invited me. I brought a book. When I was 15, I covered high school sports for my hometown newspaper and would take my scorebook and math homework to the baseball games, to get the boring chores over with all at once. I’ve always maintained baseball would be a good game for a prisoner of war camp, where there’s nothing else to do but scratch and spit. Then again, maybe not. If someone hit the ball over the fence (which I think is the whole point), game over.

I follow professional golf pretty closely. Watch on television and have been to several tournaments. I know standings, records and famous shots, both good and bad. T.C. Chen’s double hit—that’s more famous than his double eagle—at the 1985 U. S. Open; Dustin Johnson grounding his club in a bunker to lose the PGA Championship; Greg Norman losing to Fuzzy Zoeller at the U.S. Open in ’84; Larry Mize’s chip shot to beat Norman at the ’87 Masters; Jean Van de Velde’s meltdown at the Open Championship in 1999; Tiger Woods 19-hole playoff to win the U.S. Open in 2008 over Rocco Mediate, for instance.

It’s bad enough that baseball games last for hours and hours, but the season goes on forever. I don’t know, because I don’t pay any attention to it, but it seems to me that twenty minutes after the end of the World Series people are going to spring training games. And what’s the deal with spring training? What do they need to train for? It’s not like they’re doing anything, and even if they were, they just finished the season yesterday.

Golf doesn’t really have a season any more. There’s a PGA tournament every week, and here in California I can play all year round. It’s great. Some of the tournaments are more significant than others and attract more of the higher ranked players. And, there are four tournaments each year that are considered “majors”; the ones that players build their schedules around, the ones that can make a career. The Masters in April, the U. S. Open in June, the Open Championship in July and the PGA in August. The first major I went to was the U.S. Open in 1982 at Pebble Beach. Showed up at the course early Thursday and went to the first tee and followed the next group off the tee for eighteen holes, because I wanted to see the golf course. It’s Pebble Beach after all, and in those days television only showed the last four or five holes. After that I walked the course again with a group I wanted to follow, to see the players. And for the rest of the week I followed leaders and the players I was interested in. I was at the 17th green on Sunday when Tom Watson hit his famous chip shot out of the rough, holing out to beat Jack Nicklaus for the championship. It was a great time.

A lot of baseball fans I know talk about wanting to visit all the ballparks. I know people who have taken vacations to places they would never go otherwise, just to go see a ballpark. It’s crazy. As though they are any different. Overpriced beer and stale snacks. I don’t even know what cities the teams are in. San Diego built a new ballpark a few years ago, and people seem really excited about it. I suppose it’s fine, if you like that sort of thing. I’ve never been there, don’t suppose I ever will. The thing is, after you’ve looked at the field and seen it has four bases and a fence, what is there to see? Walk around and see the concession stands I guess. Take in the ambience. Do you really even have to see the game? Watch batting practice, maybe, and then leave and go to dinner.

The Masters is probably the toughest ticket in golf. Held each April at Augusta National Golf Course in Augusta, Georgia, it brings together the best golfers in the world. There’s a lottery for tickets and I’ve applied every year for at least thirty years and been turned down for tournament tickets every year and given the chance to apply for practice round tickets. I’ve been turned down for those every year too. Like Pebble Beach in ’82, I want to walk the course, see the perfectly manicured fairways and the undulations of the greens. I want to see the clubhouse and the magnolias. And that’s why, this year, when I got the email that my name had been chosen and I had the opportunity to buy two tickets for the Wednesday practice round, I booked a flight. It’s Augusta for god’s sake. I won’t be there for the tournament, but when the practice round is over and I’ve bought some souvenirs, I’ll leave and go to dinner.

I cannot wait.

Fashion Advice

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

There’s a guy I often see in the morning when the dogs take me for a walk.  He wears a blue t-shirt, work boots, black socks, denim shorts and clip-on suspenders.  The suspenders just sort of top it off.  Big, wide suspenders clipped to his shorts. He’s a short, round little man and in a couple months he could trade them in for red suspenders and get a job at any department store on earth, except that he rarely says anything more than “hello” and even that only grudgingly.

Looking at him as he came down the street this morning I couldn’t help but wonder, “does he think that’s a good look?”

I, on the other hand, wore my usual morning walk uniform — running shoes in which I’ve never run, nylon warm up pants and a white t-shirt with some sort of logo on it.

One of the advantages and disadvantages of a lifetime in television news is a large collection of free t-shirts and caps. Advantage because I haven’t had to buy a t-shirt in a long time, maybe ever. And disadvantage because many of them have dates on them.

Today’s shirt, for instance, was “ABC News – The Vote 2004” – from either the Democratic convention that nominated Kerry and Edwards in Boston or the Republican convention that re-nominated Bush and Cheney in New York.  I was at both and don’t recall where the shirt came from.  I do remember coming away from New York firmly convinced that there was no way in hell those two were going to get re-elected.  It was the same feeling I had four years earlier in Philadelphia as we watched waves of henna-headed women stand beneath the podium and chant “Bush and Dick.”

The t-shirt drawer is pretty full.  And there’s a stack of baseball caps in the closet at least three feet high.  I look at that stuff and I’m sometimes reminded of the farmers where I grew up.  No farmer in America has ever bought a cap.  And not many bought jackets.  The joke was, “why don’t farmers wear tennis shoes?” “Because seed corn companies don’t give them away.”

So, now as I walk down the street, anyone who bothers to notice knows my t-shirt is seven years old. Not the worst fashion statement and not even the oldest piece of clothing I own.  There’s a sweater from the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, for instance.  It’s been well cared for and is in pretty good shape.  Invariably when I wear it, someone will look at the logo and say “I wasn’t even born then.”

But I’m ready for them. “This ‘old’ sweater,”   I point out “is from the U.S. Open where Tom Watson made what’s no doubt the most famous golf shot in the history of the Open, the iconic chip shot from the rough behind the 17th green for birdie to win the championship and defeat Jack Nicklaus.  And I was there.  Saw it with my own two aging eyes.  And, because photo credentials were easier to get in those days, have the picture to prove it.”

They invariably look at me, shrug and say “yeah, well it still kinda fits.”

Smart ass kids.